by Kasper Lapp

Designer Diary
By Kasper Lapp

INK started with an idea for a game in which you were steadily getting new missions, while trying to complete your existing ones.

The first version I made was a card game in which you picked cards that gave you symbols that could be used to solve your current missions, while at the same time each card gave you a new mission to solve, for example, collect three purple symbols to get a bonus action. Thus, you could pick a card for its symbols or for its mission – or ideally both.

I love cute monsters, so that was the (totally random) theme I chose for the game. Each card gave you two different symbols and a mission that would give a bonus action when you collected a certain amount of a specific symbol.


The basic idea worked, but unfortunately the game felt dry. I tried to figure out why and realized that it was too one-dimensional: You either had a symbol, or you didn't. The game needed a more spatial feeling. WHERE you placed your symbols should matter.

I had just given up on a tile-laying game that used tiles with 2x2 spaces of different terrains. These tiles seemed perfect for what I was seeking, so I used them as the base for the new iteration.

The symbols became terrains — now you got four with each tile instead of two — then I plotted in missions on some of the spaces. To complete a mission, you would have to connect it to an amount of terrain spaces of the same type, e.g., five forest spaces. If you managed to do so, you would place five cubes on the spaces of the area and get a bonus action. The bigger the number, the better the bonus action. The least powerful mission required three spaces, and the most powerful seven. The first player to get rid of their 50 cubes wins.


I also came up with a market mechanism in which you could move only one way in a market of six tiles, and to reset yourself in the market, you had to spend your turn taking a tile that was worse, giving you only two spaces instead of four and containing no missions. You wanted to move forward slowly, but sometimes the perfect tile for you was far ahead.

I called the game "Populations". The theme was that you were populating the different terrains with different animals. My thought was that each of the numbers in the mountains would represent a different animal, each number on the plains would be different, and so on — but it was a theme that was added just because I needed a theme.

My tests of the game went very well. I personally enjoyed the design a lot, even though I was frustratingly bad at it, but more importantly, other people seemed to like it as well. (It passed the "let's play again" test.)

There were nice moments of clever combos with the bonus actions, and the market mechanism gave interesting choices every turn. Some players tried to get the best out of whichever tile was in front of them, whereas others took longer steps and got more suitable tiles, but then had to take the bad tiles more often – and one style of play wasn't obviously better than the other.

I proudly started showing the game to publishers, but to my surprise, nobody even wanted to try it, stating "we are overwhelmed by tile-laying games at the moment". I think I didn't manage to show what was unique about the game, and the bland theme didn't help. Plenty of other games have you connect areas of similar terrains, but what was (and still is) unique about this one is 1. the missions with bonus actions, 2. the way the market works and 3. that you race to get rid of your tokens instead of calculating a score at game's end.

I had almost given up on the design when I showed it to Final Score Games. They played it and loved it...but they had some suggestions from the start:

First, the game had way too many cubes – not only because that would be expensive, but also because you had to move a lot of cubes around, which was cumbersome and made the board look cluttered. They suggested that players place their cubes only on special spots. This way the number of cubes could be halved, yet the change also gave new strategic choices since the placement of the special spots mattered. If these spots were placed in chokeholds, they could cut areas in two, but if they were placed correctly, you could still use the areas for new missions. This change was a win-win: fewer components and a better game.


They also suggested that the bonus actions should change every game, which I was totally on board with. Adding these options required a lot of testing (mostly done by Final Score), but it has made the game much more re-playable.

One especially important challenge for this development was that the bonus actions have the right order. In the game, you draw four random bonuses, order them by their printed value, then place them in that order next to mission 4, 5, 6 and 7. If we have done the ordering correctly, bonus action 7 should always be better than bonus action 6, and so on. If we got the order wrong, players would feel cheated: "I got bonus action 7, but I would much rather have had number 6." Therefore, much of the testing was about getting the order right.


Final Score also had a great idea for the market. They pointed out that it felt boring to take a whole turn to receive nothing more than a bad tile when you chose to reset your pawn. (This is also one of the weaknesses of Small World in my opinion.)

Instead, they suggested transforming the market into a circle and adding an immediate penalty every time you cross the starting line – a bad tile that you are forced to place on top of two spaces on your board, essentially destroying those spaces — but you would then continue your turn by picking up a good tile. This didn't change the essence of the market: "moving a short distance is better than moving a long one, but sometimes you want a tile that's far away, so you have to weigh the costs vs benefits".

They also came up with the idea that the bad tiles randomly told you which color of space you must cover on your board. (In my version, you knew which bad tile you were getting ahead of time.) Thanks to both changes, the boring turns were gone and replaced with exciting turns: "Oh, no, now I really don't want to draw blue!"


Illustrator and Graphic Designer Diary
By Chris Quilliams

Game prototypes often start off in quite a different place from where they end up, and for most games, in the beginning there's usually a much different theme attached.

The first prototype we saw had the title "Populations", which had a terrain-/land-based theme. This theme was thought to be too similar when compared to a lot of classic Euro-style games, and we felt it didn't stand out among the thousands of similarly themed games out there.

What was needed? Something appealing but not typical, something contemporary and visually colorful! We had many themes to choose from, but everyone eventually became drawn to the "ink" idea. As artists, we all thought this could be exciting to explore, and the idea of flowing ink was very interesting to us.

From Idea to Cover!

So now the process...where to start? I think with the cover! In my long history of working in a game studio, often the cover would be my first assignment. The task here was not only to create a beautiful cover, but to start thinking about how the game components would visually match up. We always try to make it feel like all the components are unified with the cover as we build our universe.

It was decided that the cover would be stark white with a beautiful, colorful, high-contrast ink pattern flowing like a river. The movement aspect of this particular cover would be important as it needed to have strong visual impact.

Starting with various sketched thumbnails, we tried to find the right feel and the right composition — a cover that would stand out on shelves, one that people would be drawn to among the hundreds of other games displayed in stores. Not an easy task, but as creators we're always up for the challenge. All involved decided that creating defined color areas that echo the different tiles found in the game would be one of the most important factors.

Once we had a style and composition everyone liked, I proceeded to a final rendering. The "ink" flow had to look somewhat translucent and natural, even though the image ended up being quite stylized. With crisp edges, nice flowing symmetry, the flowing river idea took shape after trying multiple ideas.

As the main image came to completion, we decided to have the ink pattern continue around the box sides as part of a unique design. Each side would have its own painted ink flow. This way, no matter how the box gets displayed on shelves, each image would become a nicely composed work of art. The goal was to make the entirety of the box as beautiful as possible. The 3D image included hopefully shows off this dynamic a little bit.


The Artfulness of the Tile

When creating the tiles, we had a number of goals in mind. Each tile had to have colored areas distinct and recognizable for easy, understandable gameplay, and the theme had to be properly incorporated into all of the game elements, including the tiles.

It was thought that starting off with black and white value paintings would be an easy way of distinguishing the tile squares from each other (as shown in the example below). Values are a good way of controlling contrast readability, and this would help us think about a colorblind-friendly game for down the road. Different treatments were tried, and the ink pattern idea was thought best as it matched the overall theme and box cover.

We then tried bleeding the edges using ink flow patterns over the borders. Messy ink splashes were thought to be interesting, but problems occurred when the tiles were assembled together like a painting as everything felt chaotic and disorganized, as well as visually unappealing.

So we decided to go back to the original grid idea. The uniformity of the original layout was best for readable gameplay, plus the clean lines made the colors and ink patterns feel much more organized without the messiness. I've found over the years that elements with busy repetition can make for a visual look that becomes overwhelming to the eye, especially if the imagery is overly detailed. I find more times than not simplicity is the better option in this case.

The next step was creating beautiful patterns within the constraints of the tile grid. We tried high contrast value and saturation levels, we tried softer lighter saturation levels. The high saturation levels were nice, and the darker higher contrasts looked really good, but the look created more problems when the tiles were strung together, still looking messy and disorganized. When switched to the lower level saturation, everything looked quite dull and drab, but worked better with multiple tiles strung together. Trying to find the right balance might appear to be simple, but much of the time this ends up being a complex process.

Once we had a direction and the five unified colors — red, dark blue, light blue, yellow, and purple — I created tile layout grids for the printer. These layouts were based on Kasper's original prototype. The colors still weren't quite right, but at least now we could test the game and discuss how the tiles were functioning.

The next stage was adding refinement and richness back into the color ink patterns. For the last stage, we created circular frames around both the white dots and number plates, making them distinct from each other as well as creating a nice finishing touch. Once they were in place on the tiles, it visually worked really well.


Inktastic Components!

Now we have the cover and the tiles, but many other elements remain to be addressed. Game elements should all feel cohesive, together; everything needs to feel like it's part of the same game. Table presence will also play an important visual role that will hopefully create a full rich gaming experience while playing.

Matching the wheel, the display boards, and the palette cards will be the next step. I start off basic, with either black and white value or basic prototype art. (These are used for playtesting and game development.) Then I try to match these elements to the established game colors, and ideally the entire design will start to feel harmonious as the elements start to match with similar theme and art influence.

The wheel and display board are closely tied into each other and should match. I start by creating the finished design and painting for the wheel board since it will be the centerpiece when the game is displayed; it also needs to match the six tiles that will be laid around it. The wheel board colored sketches are first tried with blue and a sun motif, similar to a sun dial, but this made little sense for the theme.


Eventually, a yellow ink splash with illustrated nib spaces was created, with the nibs being a visual reminder of where to place the ink bottles as they're displayed around the board. The ink nibs just felt nicer than anything else I tried.

Also, I had to think about the design for the X-tile space where players start the game and pick up the nasty X-tiles as they go around the wheel. This space should feel neutral but visually elegant due to its placement on top of the board. The idea with the yellow and dark blue colors ended up being chosen! Everyone felt this worked best with the theme, integrating the visual look of the six tiles when they were around the circle.

We also played with the dark blue ink nib spaces making them longer for more spacing, extending them from the circumference of the board (creating more space for bottle placement), but at the end of the day we went back to the original spaces inside the circle as they looked more elegant. The display board was then designed with the same aesthetic and the number plating was created which would later match the palette cards as can be seen in the image showing the card evolution. With these elements now tied together, I moved on to the final art for everything else, giving that finishing touch at the end.


Eventually we come to a point where each game element worked individually as designed pieces of art, while also working as a cohesive unit when displayed together. The cards (as shown in the example) had an evolution of their own, starting with (again) a black-and-white rendition before becoming a finished piece of art ready for game play. Eventually they had a nice feel with the rest of the components and looked great with the bottles. With each game comes a unique workflow and creative process, this one was no exception.

While the artwork was progressing, one of the key components of the game underwent a major change that convinced the whole team. Our manufacturer had come to us with samples of mini translucent ink bottles.


After trying different shapes and materials with our prototypes, these magnificent bottles represented the dream pieces we wanted by combining the pleasure of playing and a nice aesthetic beauty.

Epilogue

We hope that you will enjoy this new game experience and make INK your own. We wish that you may have the most fun possible discovering the many ways to play, with all the many combos that can be created.